AbstractEver since the early history of mankind, there has been a desire to have power, to dominate and to be the authority. The power has emerged as a protective force during the times when governing, order, being governed, and chaotic situations are experienced and external threats are felt in society.
The power, which existed in the form of the power of a king and the people ruled by this power in the past, has now become democratized depending on the changing world conditions; and has manifested itself as a latent power spread throughout the society in such a way that the difference between the ruler and the ruled cannot be seen/distinguished. Power is now everywhere, it produces and is produced. It can also be said that power has reached a divisive dimension that uses the tools / products of information to influence the whole society and at one point knows everything. The modern world has reached a more orderly, systematic and disciplined dimension with a control system that has expanded the power and its dominance area. In the past, the society that used to be controlled by the guards and the armed forces with a rough and despotic power is now supervised by local power networks settled in the surveillance system and the social system. The "Panopticon" model originally developed by Jeremy Bentham and advanced by Michael Foucault is a structure that describes the surveillance of modern power. As a prison model, the panoptic model is a surveillance tower at the center of the building with the cells of detainees circling around the tower, and the surveillance tower at the center of the building is the controlling eye of power. The modern era has created a system that watches over several people with a giant eye with a sense of power that dominates, objectifies, automates individuals who obey the power and lose their identities. The people or society, feeling that they are being watched every moment by the power, which is unseen, shape their behaviors as the power wants. We can see that this subject has been treated in the work titled Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, one of the most important authors of English literature. Tele-screens are modern panopticons and the whole society is under the surveillance/ control / influence of Big Brother's eyes. In general, we can see the criticism on power and the surveillance of society by power in Orwell's works. Orwell, whose political criticism in the 20th century literature has made a mark on his era, is one of the remarkable authors that have been a source of not only his era but also modern age through his fictional works.
This study brings a criticism on surveillance society in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and on power in Animal Farm and Burmese Days.